Despite the allusions of their name, there’s nothing psychedelic about the band called Peace, who are from the Midlands of the UK. Instead, they tread a well-worn path of high-energy Brit-rock, a style that started in 1963 when The Beatles released Please Please Me.
Opening the night was Melbourne’s Smile, featuring technical music wizard Joshua Delaney of Rat & Co. on bass. The four-piece played a set of richly textured, yet quite jangly indie rock with washed out vocals. As Smile locked into their penultimate song White Devil, the room was three quarters full, with the entire two front rows full of under-25 females. While definitely enjoying Smile’s set, these young females were pushing up the front early to make sure they were in prime position to scope out Peace’s four spunky twenty-something members; brothers Harry and Samuel Koisser on vocals/guitar and bass respectively, plus guitarist Doug Castle and drummer Dom Boyce.
As hinted at in the introduction, Peace play pretty straight-up contemporary British rock’n’roll, with Artic Monkeys, Foals and The Mystery Jets as sonic influences. Judging by the band’s well-drilled guitar whips, jump kicks and head rolls, Peace have also taken cues from Kaiser Chiefs’ stage performance. Peace opened with the single Money from their latest album Happy People, which came out in February this year. This song has a powerful driving rhythm and melody, the full impact of which became more apparent live, whereas listening to the song on a computer, one doesn’t get it’s full power. Sticking with this theme of album singles and driving rock tracks, Peace then broke into Follow Baby from their 2013 debut, In Love.
90 percent of the crowd seemed to know the opening two tracks, resulting in the energy of the audience matching the explosive – and I would suggest, slightly rehearsed – rock moves of the four gents on stage. However, when Peace threw back to album tracks from In Love – such as California Daze and Lovesick – it became obvious that, due to their debut album only really being a hit in the UK, the Melbourne audience began to fade a little. Peace’s set-proper ended with the party tune Wraith and then after only a wee while backstage, the four boys from Worcester returned for a three-song encore.
BY DENVERMOUS MAXXIMOS
Loved: Smile.
Hated: Tyson conveniently taking credit for getting his girlfriend’s name on the door when it was all D. Watt.
Drank: Two pints.
